NEWPORT BEACH : Buffaloes, Barns and a Theme Park

On the Newport Beach-Irvine border, four big-eyed buffalo stand, sit and snooze behind an office development that once was the site of one of the county’s first amusement parks.

Buffalo Ranch, built in 1954 by Gene Clark, was a drive-through, Lion Country Safari-style attraction that took riders on a long, winding road through more than 100 acres of open land and a herd of about 100 big, burly bison.

Ranch hands included Chief Kuthle Geronimo III, who claimed he was the grandson of the famed Apache chief, and ads for the park called it the “West’s largest” buffalo ranch, where the woolly creatures--once 50 million strong across America’s plains--still roamed.

“It was ahead of its time,” said William Hendricks, director of Sherman Library and Gardens. “It was too early, too far out, and it didn’t make it.”

In fact, the park was closed just five years after it opened and the bison were hauled back to their original grazing lands in Kansas. New development offered more profit.

Newport Beach Historical Society president Bill Grundy remembers taking a carful of kids through the ranch when it was in its prime. “We had a convertible at the time, and I remember once there was a big bull on one side and the herd on the other and the kids, they were just hiding inside, and they missed the whole thing,” he recalled.

But over the years, remnants of that historic past remain intact. Bison Street is named after the old attraction. The barn that served as a restaurant and curio shop remains, as do later additions that were brought to the site by the late William Pereira, the renowned architect whose designs include Fashion Island and UC Irvine. He used the buildings for his office.

The sprawling site at the intersection of Ford Drive and MacArthur Boulevard is actually a conglomeration of barns that Pereira collected from all over the country, some dating back to the 1920s, and now occupied by a number of businesses.

“He was a barn enthusiast, a self-described barn freak,” said Tyler Regan, a spokesman for Lange Financial Corp., which occupies some of the original structures.

High on a wall inside the Lange conference room is Fred--actually the head of Fred--who was a 2,000-pound buffalo.

In 1989, William W. Lange, president of the corporation, decided to revive some of the history of Buffalo Ranch at the business complex site, and brought two buffalo from a ranch near San Diego to the yard behind his office.

Just over a year ago, two calves were born, bringing the herd to four.